Delegates from the world’s 20 biggest economies, policy wonks and financiers all brought their diverse and at-times divergent agendas to Mexico City at the weekend, but one common theme emerged: they are fed up with the euro-zone crisis, and the long and bumpy road to fixing it.

Euro-zone officials, including top German, French, Italian and Spanish officials as well as the European Central Bank boss and the European Union economics chief, faced a barrage of questions about beefing up their own rescue fund from their non-European counterparts, who won’t put up any extra cash themselves until there’s progress on expanding the so-called European “firewall.”

The European officials sought some credit for the progress they claim to have made, with the European Union Commissioner for Economics and Monetary Affairs, Olli Rehn, asking for “sympathy and support.” They got little of that in response.

“The Europeans have been talking for months to erect the necessary firewalls but can’t come to an agreement among themselves… If they can’t clean up their act, they can’t expect money from emerging economies where many countries still deal with acute poverty issues,” said one official from a G-20 nation. Read More »

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, perhaps the man most responsible for the G-20′s emergence as the key economic policy-making forum, is feeling pretty despondent about his creation these days.

At this weekend’s Brussels Forum on international affairs, Mr. Brown accused global leaders of “mini-lateralism” and said they are failing to tackle many of the deep economic problems that led to the financial crisis.

“We are all retreating into national shells at the moment,” Mr. Brown said.

Brown, who seems to have lost neither his policy grasp nor his mood of gloomy restlessness since quitting high office last May, listed a string of issues the G-20 is failing on. Read More »

About Real Time Brussels

The Wall Street Journal’s Brussels blog is produced by the Brussels bureau of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. The bureau has been headed since 2009 by Stephen Fidler, who was previously a correspondent and editor for the Financial Times and Reuters. Also posting regularly: Matthew Dalton, Viktoria Dendrinou, Tom Fairless, Naftali Bendavid, Laurence Norman, Gabriele Steinhauser and Valentina Pop.